C-suite marketing leadership for RIAs, asset managers, and wealth management firms, without the cost of a full-time executive hire. We set strategy, build the systems, and connect marketing to revenue, the way an in-house CMO would, at a fraction of the commitment.
A full-time CMO costs six figures before benefits, and most wealth management firms don't generate enough marketing surface area to justify one. A fractional CMO gives you the same strategic leadership, setting direction, building systems, while managing the full function. It's outsourced marketing for your RIA without the overhead of a full department.
| Full-time CMO | Marketing Agency | Fractional CMO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Owns strategy | Yes | Rarely | Yes |
| Sits in leadership meetings | Yes | No | Yes |
| Manages your team and vendors | Yes | No | Yes |
| Compliance fluency | Depends on the hire | Rarely | Built in |
| Time to impact | Months to recruit and onboard | Fast, but executes without direction | Weeks |
| Commitment | Full salary, benefits, equity | Retainer, scope-bound | Retainer, scaled to the work |
We don't parachute in with a generic playbook. Every engagement, whether you think of it as hiring a fractional CMO or outsourcing your marketing, starts the same way: with an audit, a structured, scored evaluation of your entire marketing function across six dimensions.
From there we build the strategy. What happens next is scoped to what you actually need, sometimes that looks like our team stepping in as embedded leadership working through your existing staff, sometimes it looks like our team running execution directly. The audit tells us which.
Whatever the execution model, a fractional CMO owns the same things:
RIAs, asset managers, and wealth management firms managing an acquisition, a leadership change, rapid growth, or marketing that hasn't scaled with the business. If FINRA, the SEC, and a compliance review are already part of how you operate, we already speak the language.
At one global asset manager, four marketing teams were running four separate processes with no one connecting them. As fractional CMO, we consolidated them under one strategy with a shared KPI scorecard across four content pillars. The firm reduced annual marketing spend by more than $750,000, while producing more content and more earned media placements than before.
Lindsay White spent fourteen years inside financial services marketing, including in-house at Raymond James, and holds a FINRA Series 7 license. When she steps in as your fractional CMO, she isn't learning the industry. She's already sat inside a firm like yours, run the compliance review, and made the calls a CMO actually has to make.
You don't need to know yet whether that looks like embedded leadership or an outsourced team, most firms don't when they first call. A 30-minute conversation to talk through where you are. If it's a fit, we start where we always start: with an audit.
Book a CallIt depends on where you are, most engagements run the equivalent of one to two days a week, heavier in the first ninety days.
Yes, and often does. A fractional CMO sets strategy and direction; your internal hire or agency executes against it. We've stepped in to give existing teams a mandate and a plan they didn't have before, not to replace them.
An outsourced CMO for RIAs owns the strategy, sets priorities, and manages the people doing the work, including agencies. An agency executes the work it's scoped to deliver, but rarely decides what the work should be or how it connects to the firm's growth goals.
Then we plan for it. For some firms, a full-time CMO is the right next step, and we build toward it from the start: the systems, the documentation, and a clear definition of the role, so the person you hire steps into a working function instead of starting from scratch. For others, fractional leadership is the right long-term fit and a full-time hire would add cost without adding capability.
Usually, yes. Most RIAs and wealth management firms don't have enough marketing surface area to justify a full-time executive salary. The audit tells us specifically whether fractional leadership covers what your firm needs, or whether you need more.
Both models exist, and which one fits depends on what the audit finds. Some engagements look like embedded leadership working alongside your existing staff. Others look like our team handling execution directly, reporting up to your leadership. Neither is the default; the scope comes from the audit, not a fixed package.